The Alchemist's Reagents & Familiars

/uses

The toolchain, hype-free — hardware, editor, and the AI familiars actually in the loop

Daily-Driver Kit

Hardware

  • A laptop that runs Ruby, Elixir, and a terminal emulator without complaint (the alchemy doesn't need much more than that)
  • A second monitor, mostly for keeping the docs open next to the code that ignores them

Editor & Terminal

  • Whichever editor survives the week — the honest answer changes more often than this page does (don't make me commit to just one)
  • A terminal multiplexer, tab completion turned all the way up, and a prompt that tells me which git branch I'm about to regret

Languages & Craft

  • Ruby
  • Elixir
  • JavaScript
  • Clojure
  • Clean Architecture
  • Domain-Driven Design
  • Monolithic Architecture
  • Microservices

AI Familiars

+22 to productivity and ideation — fuses with AI familiars (GPT, Claude, Perplexity, Local) for insight, flow, and power

  • Claude — the default familiar for anything that needs to read a lot of code before touching it
  • GPT — the second opinion, especially when a plan needs stress-testing
  • Perplexity — research and citation-chasing, before anything gets written down
  • Local models — the offline, no-telemetry option for the things that don't leave the machine

No hype here — just the routing logic. The reasoning behind picking one familiar over another lives in the AI/LLM notebook, starting with LLM Model Routing - Claude.